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[<eureka AT hctc.net>]

Wow, Warren, your blog and historic project is very 
interesting...thanks for sharing!--Sage

On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:44:55 -0400
 "WF Smith" <mogrits AT gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been going through six generations of minutiae and 
> other things as part
> of taking on the homeplace I mentioned before. Some of 
> the items are posted
> at www.palmettopathos.com and there are hundreds more to 
> come.
>
> Tonight I found a receipt for ice, delivered on account 
> in July of 1889. It
> cost a penny a pound. July 20th was a big day, where 
> they took 40 lbs. It
> was a Saturday so perhaps a dinner was planned for that 
> night or the next
> day. They bought 178 lbs for the month.
>
> Using an inflation calculator 
> (http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi) I
> discover that the ten pound bag of ice you get at the 
> convenience store for
> approximately 2 bucks is only slightly beating 
> inflation, which pegs it at
> 2.28. Of course, if you had it delivered to your home 
> you would have a 10
> dollar per delivery fuel surcharge added.
>
> The water/well/pump website I posted earlier today 
> mentioned a pre-electric,
> hand-cranked ice maker and I suspect the 1889 ice was 
> made by steam driven
> compressors and ammonia gas.
>
> For some reason I expected 1889 ice to be much more 
> expensive than today's
> ice.
>
> Warren
>
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